Home-schooler wins his second Tri-State Spelling Bee

Friday

Mar 22, 2013 at 2:00 AM

The words ranged from the familiar to the obscure, and one by one, 22 of the 25 finalists from five area schools stumbled on the correct spelling of their words and were eliminated from the competition at the 35th Tri-State Spelling Bee, held Sunday in the Delaware Valley High School auditorium.

Sherry Mohan

The words ranged from the familiar to the obscure, and one by one, 22 of the 25 finalists from five area schools stumbled on the correct spelling of their words and were eliminated from the competition at the 35th Tri-State Spelling Bee, held Sunday in the Delaware Valley High School auditorium.

Scores of family members, friends, students and teachers filled the auditorium and listened intently as one by one, finalists approached the microphone to spell words that grew in difficulty as the contest progressed.

In the final few minutes, it was a showdown involving the top three students: Samantha Sodora, Shane Fagan, and Carson Monks, as they correctly tackled the spelling of such words as "indigenous," "myriad" and "verboten."

It was "romaji" that eliminated Sodora. Four rounds later, after confidently dispatching "raita, panglossian" and "prerogative," Fagan misspelled "trattoria."

Monks, who turns 13 in April, is a home-schooled student living in Montague, N.J., and was the winner of last year's Tri-State Spelling Bee.

He deliberately and accurately worked his way through "escargot, keest, gauche, basmati," and finally, "innocuous," to win his second local competition.

When asked how he prepared for the competition, Monks offered, "I studied the umbrella packet a lot, and there's software on the Scripps website that gives you the advantage of hearing the words." The Scripps "Spell It" booklet of words to learn is given to each student, and a host of word lists, study suggestions and activities are available to students on the Scripps National Spelling Bee website.

Monks was awarded an all-expenses-paid trip for himself and one parent to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, which will be held in late May at the Gaylord National Resort and

Convention Center in Washington, D.C.

He was also awarded a first-place gold medal, Webster's Third New International Dictionary donated by Merriam-Webster Inc.; the Samuel Louis Sugarman Award of a $100 savings bond; and a one-year subscription to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online.

Fagan, the second-place winner, received a Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Both he and third-place winner Sodora received medals and one-year subscriptions to the Encyclopaedia Britannica Online, and $20 Amazon gift certificates donated by the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

Retired Delaware Valley teacher Jim Burnett celebrated his 35th year as pronouncer for the bee; a position he has held since its inception in 1978. Though nowadays he winters in Naples, Fla., he makes a special trip home each March to preside over the competition.